Monday, January 18, 2016

Half the World Before Breakfast

Today is Martin Luther King day, so here are a few words from that great man.  This is from his 1967 Massey Lecture #5, also known as his "Christmas Sermon on Peace":

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.

Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent upon most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific Islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning and that is poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese.

Or maybe you desire to have cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world.

This is the way our universe is structured. It is its interrelated quality.

We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

2 comments:

terriergal said...

"We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."

And until we recognize the Christ, the reason for Christmas in the first place... and why he had to come, and live a sinless life and die and rise again.

PBurns said...

Christmas is older than Christ. In fact, nearly every Christian tradition is an overlay on paganism, and not a very thick one. http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2011/12/merry-saturnalia.html

Nor is Christmas an early American tradition -- quite the opposite. This country was founded in opposition to Christmas. http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2007/12/fast-facts-about-christmas.html